Signs You Know You Are Italain or an Italian Rant
by PsychoSybil
Summary: If these pertain to you, look out, you just may be Italian.


A/N: Guess what? No disclaimers. I wrote this. KEH!  


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Signs U Know U R Italian or an Italian's Rant

1.You go to the grocery store and manically laugh in the direction of those moronic yuppies buying that expensive "organic pasta" and "all natural" tomato sauce they think is so great in order to have a "real Italian" experience. For you, just being Italian is an EXPERIENCE.

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2. Back in the grocery store, you pass that same f-tard buying more "organic food", as in tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, olives, basil, garlic, rustic bread, cheese, vino etc to complete the "real Italian" experience. You again laugh maniacally and infer to that person that "organic" really means "grown in shit" and to "have a nice day!"

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3. In the check out line, you notice it cost that same doofus just spent $336.09 to feed a family of 4 in order to have that "real Italian" experience while you spent $5.35 for some eggs, flour and milk. I mean really, how hard is it to let the Kitchen Aid and the Rolecta do all the work? In your book, $336.09 will feed your family for the next 8 months or a small nation for a year or Sally Struther's appetite for at least a month.

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4. On the Food Network, polenta and risotto and bruschetta are now all the rage and can be had at the au naturale grocery store or some simply-named, totally over-priced "upscale" restaurant for the price of a small tropical island or, a full tank of gas. FUCK! You've been eating this shit for years! Why the hell go to some place and EAT IT, yet alone pay big $$$ for it? Corn meal costs like 98 cents and risotto is some kinda rice trying be pasta or vice versa and which just doesn't cook! And both are bland as cardboard unless you stick an ocean's worth of salt in them. Bruschetta is like eating a brick doused with diced vegetables on it. DEEEEE-LICIOUS! (Teeth, what are those?)You are so fed up with this new trend that you break the TV with a brick sized meatball and leave the room.

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5. You tell people that you are 100 guinea and your relatives came off the boat in 19xx. You proceed to tell them your family history and traditions and then they tell you they are really HALF Italian or not Italian at all. "My mother is Italian and my father is an Aborigine….." or "My grandfather was half Italian/Celt but he married a Spanish Muslim Extremist, and then my mother married a Russian Buddhist and I'm really a league of all nations." and "Wow, you certainly ARE Italian! We don't do anything like that in my family!" You stare at them for a few seconds and notice no Italian attributes whatsoever and contemptuously call that person under your breath a "poser" or "half-breed."

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6. If you don't marry someone Italian, you are either disowned or frowned upon or ex-communicated by the Pope. The new in-law will be tolerated for only so long until "uncle" Mario proposes to off the blemish upon your family so you can start anew. That is the only way you will be allowed back into DA FAMILIA! Greeks are okay considering most of the Greek culture was stolen…er…"borrowed" from them by the Italians. Plus, them Greeks own a lot of good delis.

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7. You put an "A" on-a everything-a you-a say-a! So that way when you are looking for "Faucetta Farms" instead of Faucet Farms to go apple picking you get lost and the guy you ask for directions is confused as all hell and wonders WTF you are talking about, you DRIP!

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8. You drive something that reminds you of the old hometown in Italy and the closest thing can get is like a Monte Carlo because an Alfa Romeo costs more than your hometown's combined yearly gross income and a Pinto is some guy's dick. You think you drive like Mario Andretti even though your car can only do 0 to 60 in thirty minutes, the top speed is 85 and you stay in the right lane doing 40.5mph in a 65mph highway.

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9. Korn? Limp Bizkit? Mudvayne? Linkin Park? Fiddy Cent? Snoop Dawg? Pantera? You don't listen to these bands because they are so loud and annoying. Plus they are not Italian even if they tell people to go "Va fungul" all the time! The first two sound like food products while the fourth was the name of the playground you frequented when you were a kid making deals the other kids couldn't refuse. Fifty cents, as you remember, was your weekly allowance and mud vein sounds like some nasty transfusion. And since when did Snoopy go into busting Hos with Charlie Brown? Wasn't Peppermint Patty a lesbo? Pantera? Isn't that the bread place? Anyhow, you like to listen to that Italian-speaking radio station on the AM side and any classical radio station on the FM side that has an "Italian Music Blowout" on the weekends. Your cd collection consists of cheesy Italian music artists, opera collections, orchestral compilations.You have a shrine to Sinatra over the outdated Sony record player. On Sundays, you like to torture your kids and/or extended family members, if and when they come to your house, by blaring Andrea Boccelli out the windows whilst singing along to it. Yes, your extremely off key, mangled and incredibly fractured version is just lovely, isn't it? Everyone wants to listen to your broken, cracking falsetto voice akin to that of a teen boy going thru puberty…. (Its easier to sing GNR, cuz Axl's voice sucks anyhow.)

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10. Speaking of which, "Soprano" is NOT, I repeat, NOT a real Italian family name. It is something that a man sings when he is kicked THERE by a frustrated wife and/or girlfriend because he is too friggin' cheap to take her dinner once in a great while. Its is also something which effeminate 12 year old boys sing in that choir you see on Public TV at Xmas time. Further, "Big Pussy" is not that guy who was off-ed, but that really large cat grandma had because she fed it too much thick spaghetti.

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11. Your video collection consists of all "Godfather" related videos and anything relating to the mafia, Italian movie stars either dead or alive and Italy itself. Everything else is just shit. Yet again, you have a shrine to Dinero over the 1970s console TV and the 1980's Betamax VCR. You watched SNL for Belushi exclusively.

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12. A "church key" is not the means to gain entrance into the Vatican or your local Catholic church, but a simple bottle opener to gain access to all your home brewed spirits aka bottles of vinegar…ummmm…vino. A "church key" could also be construed as your entry to your shrine to the almighty Alcoholic Grape God, also known as the wine cellar. You have several dozen "church keys" all of which are hanging on the walls of the various rooms in your house with black marker outlines around them in order of which is your most favorite to your least favorite. While it is your dream of having the Pope give you access to Vatican City for a day, it is something that won't come true because it is a pipe dream. (You are overtly religious but not that overtly religious.) And if you don't turn on the heat, your pipes will burst and your wife will never let you forget it. Better go get that key…

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13. There is more square footage in your garden than your house and some of your neighbors' houses. The beanstalks are higher than Mount Vesuvius, fer chrissake! There are enough vegetables to fill up the produce section at your local supermarket 100 fold. There is so much vegetation in that garden that you need a map and a machete to negotiate the fucking thing without getting lost for days and having to call the National Guard or FEMA if you do. Under the cover of darkness, foreign eyes/noises belonging to god who knows what come out of nowhere so you had the National Geographic Society come out and do a 2 hour documentary on the "Unknown Perils of an Italian Garden." For all you know, there could be a new species of tiger living there. With all that plant life, oxygen levels on Earth have returned to their normal levels and the hole in the Ozone Layer is now fixed. Your garden is self seeding because with all the organic crap you throw in there over the year, plants just come to life seemingly overnite; "Look honey, yet another new breed of tomato plant! Isn't that cute, it's running around chasing Mr Fluffy! (poor Fluffy-sama, he gets no respect…IY reference)" You allow your tomatoes and zucchinis and other assorted oddities to grow to mutant sizes thus drastically reducing the food bill for the entire town.

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14. And let's not forget to mention the mixed lot of fruit trees and the many varieties of plants strewn about various places around the yard. _Jesus Christ, do you really need that many plants?_ When there's a party at an Italian's house or a small get together (25 ppl), the tradition for all the Goombahs is to do a Gilligan's Island of the yard and take a 3 hour misguided tour of it the discussing what's there, planting tips and who's got the best whatever. Let's hope they don't get stranded in the garden… Of course they all speak in some dialect gibberish no one can understand and prolly don't care about because most are cocked off their asses on vinegar….I mean… VINO! ("_Boooooy, thith thalad ith pooooooootent!"HIC!_) The discussion gets pretty heated when Uncle Guido clocks 2nd Cousin Sully in the head with mutant sized tomato and the paramedics are called. If you could video tape this fiasco and fast forward it, it would look like a Benny Hill episode where the pervert is chasing scantily clad females around parts of Britain.

Anyhow, the Italian house is easily picked out from others' houses because of the RAIN FOREST/JUNGLE growing AROUND IT! During parts of the year, you can see the Italian homeowner(s) planting all sorts of fun stuff and rigging up dangerous looking contraptions made of twine, wood and metal for the plants to grow on. "Look what I got on the side of the road, a scrap of sharp twisted rusting metal! The guy was just gonna throw it away…." or "Walmart was having a special on bulbs. I got a bag of 2000 bulbs for $2. What a deal!" or my favorite, "I stole it from the town forest…." Of course, there's always the never-ending yard restructuring as in the chopping down of and replanting of trees. An Italian will put a tree where the fucking thing shouldn't be: Smack dab in the middle of an open place. It really makes it hard to have outdoor parties or mow the lawn. When you're a kid, you'll be running to catch a ball and instead catch a tree full body on. What was planted last year, will be cut down the next. Makes no sense. "You just planted that thing, now you're cutting it down?" "Its diseased." "But ya got 20 more like it! WTF?"

Then the time comes to can the bushels of assorted fruit that take up most of your kitchen, bathroom or wherever cuz there's so much of it and lord forbid you store it outside in the shed or the garage because the animals GASP! may eat a few. _CAN'T HAVE THAT, NOW CAN WE?_ Usually, this canning thing is a weekend project that you are only too glad to stay away from because, well….let someone else do it…like grandma cuz she's good at that sort of thing! So for Xmas and the next umpteen months you get canned whatever. "MMMM! Canned whatever!" "Just what I need more of, canned whatever!" "Now I can make that canned whatever casserole I've been dying to make for weeks!" You just haven't used that canned whatever from the previous year. Multiple cans of whatever are the best: Peach preserves, blueberry jelly, canned beans, tomatoes, corn, squash, pickled prunes, etc. You've forgotten what a supermarket looks like.

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15. You know you were the favorite in the family cuz the grandparents gave you the "special candy", let's say butterscotch. It was always wrapped in gold foil and kept in the top shelf to the extreme right in the kitchen cabinets. Great lengths were met in order to get your ass that candy, you ungrateful bastard. The rest of us got the clear wrapped stale ones that sat in the bowl on the kitchen counter top for months covered in dust. When we went to unwrap it, the wrapper and the dust stuck to the candy. Can you say, "I feel special?" Put a big "L" on your forehead. You also knew you were the favorite when you got the "special biscotti" because it had chocolate on it and you got milk to drink with it. The rest of us got a Stella Doro plain one and generic gingerale to drink. Again, tattoo that "L" on your forehead.

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16. However, even if you were not the favorite, you got blessed with the Italian/American Mom and not the one from the Old Country. Italian/American Mom always put ol' Italian Dad in his place especially when he kept sticking his biscotti in his mouth. YAAAAY! Later you learned your cousins were envious of this and you got away with more shit than they ever did. (HA! HA! YOU SUCK!) When you got into trouble, you didn't have to scrub the toilet with your tongue or wax the floorboards with your bare ass, you were sent to your room to do your homework. Because of this silly revelation, the years of mental torture have been washed away. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

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17. Look out! When the Italian family moves in, so doesn't the statue of the Madonna placed in the yard where everyone can see it. No tacky lawn ornaments here, just religious statues that look like they are about to be swallowed up by a giant, light blue hued clam, that's all. The tacky colored lights shining on it are a nice effect, too.

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18. The idea of collecting anything to an old-world Goombah is a foreign concept. The only thing they collect is cans of food and boxes of pasta when there's a sale at the cheap ass supermarket. "See, Mr Fluffy has his own 5 foot tall cabinet of canned cat food…." "Good thing we rescued him from that mutant tomato plant otherwise he wouldn't be here to eat it all!" You tell these people you got a collection of something and they look at you like you got 15 mutant zucchini plants growing out of your ears and then you hear, "What the heck you need that for?" or "What are ya gonna do with that? Why don't you sell it?" or "You should start a business." Yet these people got a collection of church keys, canned whatever and bottles of vino sitting in their houses. _Why don't you start your own vegetable stand? _Okay, at least my collection can't be consumed in a matter of hours….

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19. You go to the Chinese food joint and ask if they got bread and the waiter tells you "No." So you walk to the bakery next door and come back with a few loaves. And you wonder why the waiter is chasing you out of the restaurant with a large nasty-looking Ginsu knife after canceling your order….

20. White shoes are an outrage. No self respecting Italian wears or owns white shoes, only those fat pudgy Americans do! You may have 500 pairs of shoes in the closet but none are white! Most are black and some are other colors. Tan is good, but white is a tool of the devil. Even your sneakers are black. You may be living here in America excommunicated by the Pope, but you don't have to bow down to ill fashion sense and wear white shoes with every outfit imaginable, like white sneakers with a business outfit or white sandals with white sox with a wife beater outfit. Such a fashion no-no!

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21. Italians have the best fashions in the entire world. Milan is the center of the fashion empire and not Paris. May the Eiffel Tower fall down up you, you smelly French wanna-bes! Bite my biscotti, you French pansy! If it doesn't make any sense, is too complicated too wear, is 15 sizes too small contrary to what the tag says, has some long vowel ridden name on the label and costs a ton of Lira, then its Italian.

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22. Speaking of fashion sense, you have so much black in your wardrobe that you put Dracula to shame and if you only had the chance, you'd drain the living essence out of those two fagalicious morons who host "What Not To Wear" when they diss people who wear too much black.

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23. You hold on to grudges longer than you hold on to your best pair of underwear. Underwear doesn't last 50,000 years but your grudge does because you can take it with you to the other world long after you're dead. I'm sure Jesus, Beelzebub and God would love to have a tea party with you to hear about the land deal gone wrong for the trillionth time and how you're gonna get even with Guiseppe once you get the chance.

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24. Italian Décor is always the best. The old myth that the old timers covered their furniture in plastic is true. In the winter, it was colder than the Antarctic and you could use it as an Ice Rink if you dared and, in the summer, it was hotter-n hell and the only thing that stuck to that plastic seating was YER ASS! The other myth that everything has got to match is also true. The porno phrase, "Does the carpet match the drapes?" had to have come from some senile old Italian lady's interpretation of interior décor somewhere down the line when she woke up one morning and decided it to be so. This psychotic homemaker had unknowingly started a trend that somehow unfortunately caught on. So Italian housewives all over the world wanted matching décor. It innocently(?) started with the vase of flowers sitting atop a table and then Mrs Italian Housewife got the brilliant idea to stick that same motif on curtains. And then when that wasn't enough, the walls fell victim with matching wallpaper, then the chandeliers, then the pillows, then the furniture, the lamps, the rugs, the cat, the dog, the husband, the car, and the plastic (let's not forget that) and anything else that could be easily referenced, categorized or looked up by an ornate flower motif crossed referenced with a ton of lace. So in the end, EVERYTHING MATCHED.

You can't get around easily in an Italian's house because you never know when your gonna be body-slamming yerself into some "hidden" door somewhere , WHACK! **UH!** or if your crotch is gonna meet its untimely demise with some doorknob when it hits you unexpectedly down THERE from outta nowhere, especially if you are a guy THUD **_AAAAAIIGGGHHHHH!_** Or you might trip over the family pet because Mr Fluffy's been wallpapered to match the fucking rug or something. The only way you'll know it's the cat is by the pathetic meowing coming from within the poor animal's papered shell. You even might mistakenly fall down the stairs one day because they've been painted to match the drapes and you'll mistake them for a solid surface and go plummeting to your doom. The gymnastics you do will be most original and get you high marks and possible a place in the Guiness World Records, but they won't help your situation, especially if you're a guy. There goes your seed now splattered all over the wall. "Honey? What happened to the ssssttttaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrsssssssssssssss….." BAM, OOF, BOOM, UH, BOOM, OH, BLAM, BAM, UH! BLAM, UH! Imagine getting locked in a room in one of these houses or even lost. The consequences are too dire to mention. "Local Italian Man Found Starved Half to Death: Pasta Matched Drapes" If you do locate the key to unlock a door, it too will be covered in some horrible flowered pattern. "WTF!"

When you walk into an Italian house, your senses feel like they've been hit in the face multiple times by the heaviest cast iron skillet imaginable**. WHAM!** And your body feels like it's been run over by a Mac truck convoy laden with yards of flowers and lace. Your brain screams in silent agony as it tries to decipher where the hell its at, your eyes bulge outta yer head like an electrocuted Han Solo, and your mouth hangs numb drooling like some horny Priest to an alter-boy. In essence, you become a fat Anna Nicole Smith at an all you can eat buffet. Your senses slowly regain their composure to notice 1. the overwhelming matching décor and accessories, 2. the various murals painted on the ceiling and walls depicting ancient Italian culture, 3. golden gilt marble topped tables decked out in crystal and 4. the ornately carved wooden furniture reminiscent of something out King Louis XIV's time and you wonder where the hell you are: Versailles or the US. You close your eyes and do a "Wizard of Oz" on yourself and slowly click your heels together hoping against hope that "There is no place like home…" and you will be delivered from this nightmare, but alas, it sucks to be you. Limbo is looking pretty good about now. So you open your eyes and you further investigate this X-file to notice other oddities such as, Pope Commemorative Plates, Presidential Commemorative Plates, The Madonna, plastic figurines, and many pictures of dead people. And why is it so dark and where the fuck are all the cats coming from? Frankly, a tour of Seven Hells would be more preferable. You go insane and run around like a chicken with its head chopped off and find you can't leave because you can't find the door….

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25. Your family was anal-retentive Italian even if they'd been living in America for 20 years: They lived, breathed, ate, slept, spoke etc everything Italian. Rome was the center of the universe and was responsible forthe Big Bang. The Pope was the almighty creator, who made everyone Italian and anyone who deviated from it was a blasphemer.

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